Counter culture hero Paul Krassner - co-founder of the Yippies - has made available a recording of Homer Simpson that Fox refused to sanction. It features Dan Castellaneta, who plays Homer in Fox's The Simpsons introducing a live performance by Krassner. Although the introduction was penned by Castanella, Fox owns the rights and after hearing the entire CD refused permission for Homer's voice to appear, according to Krassner.

Although Palm's software chief David Nagel hit the right, very cautious note in interviews yesterday - as the company finally released final code for PalmOS 5.0 - the company still can't resist its bad habit of overselling itself.

It is quite normal for old concepts to be repackaged and reproduced as new ideas. For a long time, there has been a view that virtualisation is good because it provides a common platform for development. However, this is creating opportunities for others who can do clever things beneath that platform.

The UK government intends to implement sweeping extensions to the snooping powers of official bodies before its controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) even comes into force. RIPA was bludgeoned through Parliament two years ago in the face of heavy opposition, and is to come into force later this year.

Gartner, the IT analyst firm, makes something of a speciality of estimating the total cost of ownership (TCO) of computer hardware for its corporate customers. You know the sort of stuff - the purchase price of a desktop PC is only 12 per cent of its TCO; it costs up to $150 to dispose a PC safely and legally etcetera.

In the past couple of weeks wireless technology developer TTPCom has been touring companies demonstrating one of the most intensely desirable mobile phone handsets - a silver and blue demo unit that you'll never be able to buy (not exactly, anyway), but that the company hopes will fire the imagination of handset manufacturers and help trigger the mobile phone games revolution.